THIS YEAR, BEFORE NIGHT RUSHES IN, WE AWAIT THE RIGHT MOMENT. When sky turns cyan and a breeze chants in the air, against our ears. When sky turns grey, erasing sun rays and hinting at rain, which hasn’t appeared in months.

Everyone in the area tenses upon their chairs, hoping to be agents in a new rite, begging Mother Nature to grant us those liquid grains from her atmosphere. We cant and cry, hoping she’ll hear us, when a gay gent strolls amongst us, stroking the cat on his shoulder. He lifts his thin legs like a crane then breaks into a canter. Some gather their young in fright. He tears off his hat, exposing a halo of hair, rants about how in this age, it is our hate that keeps Her from cooperating.

When an old hag jumps from her seat, we grit our teeth. She rages at the man, spittle staining her chin like tinea, her breath stinking of gin. She claims that the gates of the moon shall open to anyone who hasn’t tired of life’s mysteries.

The man grins the whole time. The cat has changed to a hare eating hay (some say it never was a pet but a rat disguised in rags).

Aside: don’t attempt to tag this as fiction; reality, in actuality, is fraught with much more strangeness.